Why measure women’s empowerment? When it comes to work, women and girls often have fewer choices than men and boys, giving them less opportunity to earn an income and participate fully in their communities. Their work, including valuable housework and childcare, often goes unpaid and their workload tends to be disproportionately larger than that of their male peers.4 Women systematically earn lower wages and, in poor and marginalized communities, have fewer opportunities for formal education.5 An uneducated girl faces a tough road. She is more likely to become a child bride, lose her life or her baby during childbirth, or suffer discrimination, abuse and exploitation.6 Sizing up these sobering realities is important. But we should not put the measuring tape away as we work to reverse these trends. How will we know what investments best protect a girl from hardship and benefit her entire community? Or what interventions help an educated woman earn a higher income, make more informed familyplanning decisions, be healthier, and pass along her knowledge and values to her children? Saying women and girls are the best investment in the world has a louder ring of truth when you’re holding the bottom-line analysis to prove it. Imagine how many more people will buy into this idea — with their hearts, their time and their support — when we have the answers to these questions. Building that evidence base requires a sound foundation, however, including statistical information and survey results broken down by sex. Unfortunately, this sex-disaggregated data is often hard to find. That makes it more difficult to answer basic questions about education (What are the causes of gender gaps in completion of primary and secondary schools?), entrepreneurship (What factors improve the productivity of businesses owned by men vs. those owned by women?) and access to land (What policies can increase women’s ownership of productive agricultural lands?). U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on the world to fill that gaping hole in November 2011, at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea.7 “There’s an old saying: ‘What gets measured, gets noticed,’” Clinton said. “So that means we must collect data so we are constantly focused on how better to integrate women into our economies and, using this evidence, build gender-inclusive development policies that work.” During the forum, Clinton announced the Evidence for Data on Gender Equality initiative, or EDGE, which is led by the United Nations and will attempt to harmonize gender data kept across nations and surveys. So far, the United States and South Korea have pledged support for EDGE. But filling this massive void in evidence and data will require many more of the world’s donor governments to follow suit.
There’s an old saying: “ ‘What gets measured, gets noticed.’” Hillary Clinton
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Reaching New Heights: The Case for Measuring Women’s Empowerment